At the end of February, Spotify announced that HiFi (high fidelity) sound would soon be available as part of a new payment plan, superior to the existing one, in the style of Tidal or Amazon Music HD. Already at the time, we speculated on the possibility of Apple making a similar move by incorporating such an option into Apple Music. Well the day is approaching: as we have learned from Applesfera thanks to sources in the recording industry who prefer to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, Apple Music will launch a HiFi option soon, something in turn anticipated by a discovery in the beta code of iOS 14.6 with some internal references.
In the days when Applesfera was working on this information and as we tried to find a second independent source to confirm it, the portal specialized in the US music industry Daily Double Clicks posted this news adding something we didn’t know: according to them, it will maintain the same price of 9.99 dollars or dollars and will not be a step towards a higher plan. There are other details not yet released that we were able to confirm..
According to the sources of Applesfera, it is a Dolby system with immersive sound to provide 360 degree sound experience. Warner Music, Universal and Sony Music, the big three record companies in the industry, are working on it to ensure that a very high percentage of the song catalog on Apple Music has that option. In fact the credits of these tracks, adapted to immersive sound, will feature the sound engineers who have remastered them in recent months.
April 15 as a marked date and adaptive quality system
The original release was slated for the record labels for April 15, although it did not happen on either that date or the April 20 event where Apple announced AirTags or the iMac with Apple. Silicon among others. Our sources point out that it is possible that this was not the date that Apple had planned to launch, but that it was the deadline set for record companies to have their service ready by the date they really had in mind. Apple’s next big event will be WWDC 2021, which kicks off on June 7, so we’ll be able to see some news there in that regard, although that may also be part of a later launch.
In addition to this version, we also know that Apple launches adaptive quality system for Apple Music. That is, the quality of the music will vary depending on the bandwidth available to the user at all times, which may offer lower quality in times of low 3G coverage, for example; and automatically higher quality when you enjoy a strong 5G signal. Currently, it is only possible to choose a fixed maximum quality for each type of connection, mobile or Wi-Fi.
Since Applesfera We reached out to Apple, who declined to comment on this issue. A Sony Music spokesperson told us that “per Apple Music, there is no official statement on this, and it is surely a release that they are communicating in a surprise manner,” without explicitly denying or confirming this publication. Warner Music and Universal had not responded to our request at the time of this article’s publication.
